Current medical technology utilizes a number of implanted medical devices to provide a wide-range of therapy for patients. Such implanted medical devices (IMDs) may provide rhythm altering electrical impulses to a patient's heart or other types and forms of electrical or neuro-muscular stimulus. These IMDs may also infuse a variety of therapeutic agents. Many of these IMDs are implanted beneath the skin of a patient and frequent physical access to the devices for alteration of the intensity, duration or other characteristics of the therapy is not desirable.
Current technology in the medical device industry allows for monitoring and communication with an implanted medical device without needing to directly access the IMD. Such access may even be accomplished remotely with telemetry tools capable of transmitting and receiving information via existing long-distance communication avenues, such as telephone, cellular communications or radio links. While these known techniques do permit remote alteration of the therapy delivered by an IMD, additional safety measures to guard against mistakes in the programming of the new therapy or unexpected consequences of application of the new therapy are desirable.
Operation of an IMD based on a set of proposed or temporary operating parameters is also currently known. However, the current technology requires that a patient be physically present at a caregiver's location and within local telemetry range of the caregiver's programming equipment. In addition, once proper loading of the temporary parameters into the IMD has been verified, and IMD operation based on the temporary parameters has been verified, the caregiver's programming equipment is required to instruct the IMD to adopt the temporary parameters as normal operating parameters. Current IMD only permit operation in a temporary parameter mode when the IMD is proximate to and in continuous communication with the caregiver's programming equipment.